EU-hosted7 sub-processorschecked 12 August 2026

TimerOS vs ActivTrak: hours that become invoices, and EU storage by default

EU storage by default, not on request. Hours become projects, budgets and invoices in the same workspace, with a branded client portal, from €8 a month. No screenshots, no keystroke logging. Windows-only tracking, no SOC 2, card at signup.

For freelancers billing by the hour and teams of three to fifteen. Both buy with a card, no sales call.

Vezoft EOOD makes TimerOS. Every ActivTrak fact below was read off their own pages on 12 August 2026 and links to the page it came from.

Card at signup; nothing is charged for 14 days, then billing starts unless you cancel from the Subscription page in your dashboard. Billed annually: €8 a month for one seat, €96 for the year, or €15 per user for a team. Full pricing.

Stay on ActivTrak if
  • Procurement starts with a SOC 2 report. Its trust centre lists SOC 2 Type I and Type II; we hold neither. [src]
  • You run macOS or ChromeOS: “ActivTrak offers a Windows Agent, macOS Agent, and ChromeOS Agent”, where our tracking is Windows-only. [src]
  • You want to start at no cost. It has a free plan at $0 per worker / month, capped at 3 people. We have no free tier at all. [src]
Switch to TimerOS if
  • You want to roll this out without a fight: no screenshots and no keystroke logging exist in TimerOS at all, and the tracked person watches the same timer bar you do.
  • You want the hours to end in an invoice and a client update. Projects, billing and a branded client portal are in the same subscription from €8 a month billed annually.
  • You want EU storage as the default rather than something to request: databases, application compute and uploaded files, on every plan. ActivTrak’s own page states US by default, with an EU data centre available on request for paid accounts. [src]
EU vs US

where each stores by default. Ours: databases, application compute and uploaded files, on every plan. ActivTrak: “data is stored in the US by default”, with an EU data centre on request for paid accounts. [src]

Windows only

is where TimerOS tracking runs. ActivTrak “offers a Windows Agent, macOS Agent, and ChromeOS Agent”. [src]

7 vs 49

sub-processors on each published list. ActivTrak’s legal list shows 49; its trust centre shows two. Ours shows seven. [ours] [legal] [trust]

Neither the location nor the count is a verdict on anyone’s security. Both companies publish a sub-processor list, both carry SCCs, and both can sit inside a lawful GDPR setup. What differs is the default and the paperwork it generates. Every figure here is sourced in the rows below.

Head to head

12 rows, each one sourced, so you can check all of it without taking our word for anything. Where a fact could not be established from ActivTrak’s own documentation the cell says so instead of guessing, including where the gap is ours.

TimerOS
ActivTrak
What you can actually do with itThe work between tracking an hour and getting paid for it. We chose these rows, so they favour us.
Project management
Projects, tasks, budgets and a whiteboard the client approves work on. From the Freelancer tier up. [features]
Project management
Not stated on the pages checked: no projects, tasks or budgets row appears in the plan cards or the feature table. The plans are built around workforce analytics. [src]
Client portal
A branded client portal at your own address (your-slug.timeros.ai): projects, approvals, tickets, invoices and chat, with no seat billed for the client. Every tier. [features]
Client portal
Not stated on the pages checked: no client login, client access or external-stakeholder row appears in the plan cards, the feature table or the features page. The nearest items are internal: role-based access control and SSO. [src]
Invoicing
Invoices raised from tracked hours in the same workspace, on every tier. Full P&L including payroll is Enterprise. [our pricing]
Invoicing
Not stated on the pages checked: the only billing-adjacent entry is a reporting template: “Contractor billing reconciliation BI template”. [src]
Support desk for your clients
Support tickets and incident war rooms your client can be brought into, on every tier. [features]
Support desk for your clients
Not stated on the pages checked: the “Support Plans” section covers ActivTrak’s own support to you (Digital, Premier and Signature), not a helpdesk you operate. [src]
Integrations
None shipped. Integrations are listed on Enterprise but are not built yet. [roadmap]
Integrations
Listed on its pricing table, with some capabilities marked “via ActivConnect add-on”. [src]
What it does to the people using itWhat is recorded, and what your team has to agree to.
Where tracking runs
Windows 10 and 11 only, as a desktop app, with the timer visible in a bar the tracked person can see at all times. Projects, invoicing, approvals and everything else run in a browser at app.timeros.ai, and your clients sign in separately at your own branded portal address. [download]
Where tracking runs
“ActivTrak offers a Windows Agent, macOS Agent, and ChromeOS Agent.” The ChromeOS agent also covers the Chrome browser on systems without their own agent. [src]
Screenshots
None. The feature is not built, so there is nothing to switch off. The Windows app reads the active window title, application name and browser host in memory to classify the time; what reaches the server is the label, its confidence and hours per day. If you correct a classification, that app and title are saved on your own machine.
Screenshots
“By default, ActivTrak does not take or retain screenshots. Our Screen Details feature is only available as an optional add-on purchase.” [src]
Keystroke logging
None.
Keystroke logging
“No, ActivTrak does not keystroke log or screen scrape, and has no intention of ever doing so.” [src]
What it costsEntry price, and what happens when the trial ends.
Entry price
  • Freelancer €8 / month billed annually, €10 month to month. One seat.
  • Startup €15 per user / month billed annually, €18 monthly. Up to 50 seats.
  • Enterprise is early access and not self-serve.
  • No free tier. The 14-day trial takes a card at signup. Nothing is charged if you cancel. [our pricing]
Entry price
  • A free plan at $0 per worker / month, with activity visibility limited to 3 people and 30 days of history.
  • Work Activity Tracking $10 per worker / month.
  • Workforce Management $15.
  • Productivity Optimization $17.
  • All billed annually: “We currently only offer annual plans.” [src]
Where your data livesThe part your client’s procurement team asks about.
Where data lives, and on whose infrastructure
EU. Databases on MongoDB Atlas pinned to AWS eu-central-1 (Frankfurt) and eu-west-1 (Ireland); application compute on Render in Frankfurt; uploaded files in Cloudflare R2 created with the EU jurisdiction restriction. [our list]
Where data lives, and on whose infrastructure
“Data is hosted in the Google Cloud Platform. Currently, data is stored in the US by default.” [src] Data centres exist in Sydney, Montréal, St. Ghislain (Belgium), London and Council Bluffs, Iowa; AWS us-east-1 is also listed for infrastructure hosting. [src]
EU region option
Default on every plan. There is no region toggle, because there is no other region.
EU region option
Yes, on request. The help centre says “customer data for paid accounts can be stored in one of our other locations” (updated 15 July 2026); the trust centre FAQ words the same policy as “Advanced and Premium customers”. Also: “When machines first connect, they make an initial request against the main US data center to learn where your data is stored. Nothing is saved in the US from that request.” [src]
Sub-processors
Seven. Two are EU companies processing EU-to-EU (Lettermint B.V. and Zoho Corporation B.V., both Netherlands). Stripe and Google LLC involve US processing; Google only for Play distribution and push on the Android build. [our list]
Sub-processors
49 on the legal list (updated 12 September 2025), including GCP and Looker in five regions (europe-west1 among them) and roughly 37 further US entries. [src] The trust centre shows only two. [src]
What you can actually do with itThe work between tracking an hour and getting paid for it. We chose these rows, so they favour us.5
Project management
TimerOS
Projects, tasks, budgets and a whiteboard the client approves work on. From the Freelancer tier up. [features]
ActivTrak
Not stated on the pages checked: no projects, tasks or budgets row appears in the plan cards or the feature table. The plans are built around workforce analytics. [src]
Client portal
TimerOS
A branded client portal at your own address (your-slug.timeros.ai): projects, approvals, tickets, invoices and chat, with no seat billed for the client. Every tier. [features]
ActivTrak
Not stated on the pages checked: no client login, client access or external-stakeholder row appears in the plan cards, the feature table or the features page. The nearest items are internal: role-based access control and SSO. [src]
Invoicing
TimerOS
Invoices raised from tracked hours in the same workspace, on every tier. Full P&L including payroll is Enterprise. [our pricing]
ActivTrak
Not stated on the pages checked: the only billing-adjacent entry is a reporting template: “Contractor billing reconciliation BI template”. [src]
Support desk for your clients
TimerOS
Support tickets and incident war rooms your client can be brought into, on every tier. [features]
ActivTrak
Not stated on the pages checked: the “Support Plans” section covers ActivTrak’s own support to you (Digital, Premier and Signature), not a helpdesk you operate. [src]
Integrations
TimerOS
None shipped. Integrations are listed on Enterprise but are not built yet. [roadmap]
ActivTrak
Listed on its pricing table, with some capabilities marked “via ActivConnect add-on”. [src]
What it does to the people using itWhat is recorded, and what your team has to agree to.3
Where tracking runs
TimerOS
Windows 10 and 11 only, as a desktop app, with the timer visible in a bar the tracked person can see at all times. Projects, invoicing, approvals and everything else run in a browser at app.timeros.ai, and your clients sign in separately at your own branded portal address. [download]
ActivTrak
“ActivTrak offers a Windows Agent, macOS Agent, and ChromeOS Agent.” The ChromeOS agent also covers the Chrome browser on systems without their own agent. [src]
Screenshots
TimerOS
None. The feature is not built, so there is nothing to switch off. The Windows app reads the active window title, application name and browser host in memory to classify the time; what reaches the server is the label, its confidence and hours per day. If you correct a classification, that app and title are saved on your own machine.
ActivTrak
“By default, ActivTrak does not take or retain screenshots. Our Screen Details feature is only available as an optional add-on purchase.” [src]
Keystroke logging
TimerOS
None.
ActivTrak
“No, ActivTrak does not keystroke log or screen scrape, and has no intention of ever doing so.” [src]
What it costsEntry price, and what happens when the trial ends.1
Entry price
TimerOS
  • Freelancer €8 / month billed annually, €10 month to month. One seat.
  • Startup €15 per user / month billed annually, €18 monthly. Up to 50 seats.
  • Enterprise is early access and not self-serve.
  • No free tier. The 14-day trial takes a card at signup. Nothing is charged if you cancel. [our pricing]
ActivTrak
  • A free plan at $0 per worker / month, with activity visibility limited to 3 people and 30 days of history.
  • Work Activity Tracking $10 per worker / month.
  • Workforce Management $15.
  • Productivity Optimization $17.
  • All billed annually: “We currently only offer annual plans.” [src]
Where your data livesThe part your client’s procurement team asks about.3
Where data lives, and on whose infrastructure
TimerOS
EU. Databases on MongoDB Atlas pinned to AWS eu-central-1 (Frankfurt) and eu-west-1 (Ireland); application compute on Render in Frankfurt; uploaded files in Cloudflare R2 created with the EU jurisdiction restriction. [our list]
ActivTrak
“Data is hosted in the Google Cloud Platform. Currently, data is stored in the US by default.” [src] Data centres exist in Sydney, Montréal, St. Ghislain (Belgium), London and Council Bluffs, Iowa; AWS us-east-1 is also listed for infrastructure hosting. [src]
EU region option
TimerOS
Default on every plan. There is no region toggle, because there is no other region.
ActivTrak
Yes, on request. The help centre says “customer data for paid accounts can be stored in one of our other locations” (updated 15 July 2026); the trust centre FAQ words the same policy as “Advanced and Premium customers”. Also: “When machines first connect, they make an initial request against the main US data center to learn where your data is stored. Nothing is saved in the US from that request.” [src]
Sub-processors
TimerOS
Seven. Two are EU companies processing EU-to-EU (Lettermint B.V. and Zoho Corporation B.V., both Netherlands). Stripe and Google LLC involve US processing; Google only for Play distribution and push on the Android build. [our list]
ActivTrak
49 on the legal list (updated 12 September 2025), including GCP and Looker in five regions (europe-west1 among them) and roughly 37 further US entries. [src] The trust centre shows only two. [src]

Your team’s workspace, and your client’s

One subscription runs both. Your team works in the first; your client signs in at your own branded address and sees their side of the same job: projects, approvals, tickets and invoices. No seat, no licence, nothing to install.

Your team desktop app + web

The workspace your team works in, live and clickable. Shown here as the Windows desktop app, which is where tracking runs; the web app at app.timeros.ai is the same workspace without it.

Your client your-slug.timeros.ai

The same work from the client’s side: their projects, their invoices, their tickets. Included from the €8 Freelancer tier up.

The client’s side, at your own address. Nothing loads from YouTube until you press play. Watch on YouTube.

What the hosting difference actually changes

support.activtrak.com — data centre locations

Its help centre says:

Currently, data is stored in the US by default.
Read it on ActivTrak’s sitechecked 12 August 2026
Where TimerOS stores your data
European Union
Where ActivTrak says it stores data
United States (default)EU — Belgium, on requestUK · Canada · Australia, on request

ActivTrak is the closest of the three on residency: it operates a genuine EU data centre in St. Ghislain, Belgium, will store your data there, and names europe-west1 in its sub-processor list. It has an answer for European buyers.

Two details decide whether it is enough for you. It is US by default and EU on request for paid accounts, so residency depends on someone asking and on that request surviving every later account change. And agents first contact the US data centre to discover where your data lives. They document that honestly, but it is one more line to explain in an assessment. Against that, TimerOS has no other region to be in, and seven sub-processors against forty-nine. Neither figure is a verdict on anyone’s security, but they are different amounts of review work. ActivTrak holds SOC 2 Type II and we do not.

What one TimerOS subscription covers

Hours on their own are not worth much. They matter once they become an invoice, a project margin and something a client can see, which is usually where a team buys three more tools.

Two tiers you can buy with a card. Freelancer is one seat, not a stripped demo. The branded client portal, invoicing and support tickets are all inside it, and the client who signs in costs you no seat and no licence. Startup adds the parts a team needs. Enterprise covers payroll, an org chart and single sign-on, but it is early access rather than self-serve, and several items on that list are not shipped. There is no free tier, and the 14-day trial takes a card at signup.

Freelancer
€8 / month billed annually · €10 monthly · one seat
  • Projects and tasks
  • Invoicing and billing
  • Basic expenses and a basic profit overview
  • Support tickets
  • A branded client portal — chat, whiteboard approvals, incident war rooms
Startup
€15 / user / month billed annually · €18 monthly
  • Everything in Freelancer
  • Team management, with hours per person in one workspace
  • Shifts and scheduling
  • Time-off approvals and leave balances
  • Company goals, awards and team performance

Up to 50 seats. Beyond that is Enterprise, which is early access and not self-serve.

Enterprise
Early access — not self-serve
  • Full payroll
  • Unlimited departments and a company-wide org chart
  • Custom roles and permissions
  • Full expenses (vendor bills, approvals)
  • Full P&L including payroll

Single sign-on, an audit log, integrations and dedicated support are on this tier’s list but are not shipped yet — they are on the roadmap.

What the person being tracked sees all day: a bar that stays on top, showing the state it is recording and the running total. Nothing is hidden from them — there is no silent mode, and no screenshots to review afterwards.

About a minute, from signing in to a tracked day. Nothing loads from YouTube until you press play. Watch on YouTube.

What switching actually involves

  • Install is per machine. The Windows app on the machines being tracked; nothing to install for managers or for clients.
  • There is no bulk import. No CSV import today. Teams start on a period boundary and keep the old tool read-only for history.
  • Your clients get their own address. A branded portal at your own subdomain, not a login to our dashboard.
  • There is no SOC 2 report. No Type I, no Type II. If a client’s security review begins with that document, we will not pass it.
  • Cancelling is self-serve. The workspace owner cancels from the Subscription page; nothing is charged if you do it inside the 14 days.

Where ActivTrak is the better choice

If one of these is a dealbreaker, ActivTrak is the right purchase.

Stay on ActivTrak if
$0 per worker / month

It has a free plan, and we have none

$0 per worker per month is a real starting point. We have no free tier and our 14-day trial takes a card at signup. To try something without a purchase decision, start there.

Stay on ActivTrak if
SOC 2 Type I and Type II

SOC 2 Type II, and a published control set

Its trust centre lists SOC 2 Type I and Type II, penetration testing and a downloadable policy packet. We do not hold SOC 2. If your procurement starts with that report, no amount of EU hosting substitutes for it.

Stay on ActivTrak if
Benchmarks, utilisation, wellbeing

Workforce analytics is the actual product

For benchmarking, utilisation, focus and wellbeing analytics across a large workforce, ActivTrak does considerably more than we do. Our reporting serves billing and project profitability first.

Stay on ActivTrak if
Windows, macOS, ChromeOS agents

Broader OS coverage

Our tracking is Windows-only. If you run macOS or ChromeOS at any scale, we cannot measure that time and ActivTrak can.

If none of those describe you
You give up a lower entry price and a wider platform list. You get your databases, application compute and uploaded files in the EU by default, 7 sub-processors instead of 49, an EU contracting entity, Vezoft EOOD in Bulgaria, and the billing and client side of the work in one subscription.

Questions people ask before signing up

Does it take screenshots of my screen, or log what I type?

No. Not even as a setting you switch off. Neither feature exists in the product, so there is nothing to disable and nothing to review afterwards. The Windows app reads the active window title, the application name and, in a browser, the site’s domain, in memory, to work out what the time was spent on; what reaches the server is the label, how confident the classification is, and hours per day. If you correct a classification, that app and title are saved on your own machine, not ours. The timer itself lives in a bar the tracked person can see all day. There is no silent mode.

Is there a free plan, and does the trial take a card?

There is no free tier, and yes, the 14-day trial takes a card at signup. Nothing is charged during the trial, the card is captured through Stripe, and the workspace owner can cancel from the Subscription page in the dashboard before day 14. After that it is €8 a month billed annually for Freelancer (€10 month to month, one seat), or €15 per user per month billed annually for Startup (€18 monthly, up to 50 seats).

I work alone. What do I get for €8, and does my client have to pay?

Projects and tasks, invoicing and billing, basic expenses and a basic profit overview, support tickets, and the full branded client portal at your own address, where your client sees their projects, approvals, tickets, invoices, chat, a whiteboard they approve work on, and incident war rooms. Your client does not consume a seat or a licence and pays nothing. Team management, shifts, approvals and goals sit on Startup, not on the €8 tier. Full expenses and a full P&L are on Enterprise, which is early access and not self-serve.

What does my client actually see, and does a client cost me a seat?

Your client signs in at your own branded portal address, not our dashboard, and sees their projects, the approvals waiting on them, their tickets, their invoices, a chat thread with you, a whiteboard where they sign off work, and incident war rooms if something breaks. A client account consumes no seat and no licence, so adding clients does not raise your bill, and the portal is included from the €8 Freelancer tier upward. It is a separate address from app.timeros.ai, where your side of the workspace runs. Do not send clients there.

Can I tell whether a client is making or losing money?

Up to a point. Hours attach to projects and tasks that carry budgets, and those hours become invoices in the same workspace, so you can compare what a client took against what it billed. Freelancer and Startup include basic expenses and a basic profit overview. Full expenses with vendor bills and approvals, and a full P&L including payroll, are on the Enterprise tier, which is early access and not self-serve.

Half of us are on Macs. Can we use it?

Not for tracking. Automatic tracking runs on the Windows desktop app and nowhere else. No macOS, no Linux, no mobile tracking. It starts when the machine is signed in to and classifies activity on the device itself. Everything else runs in a browser: your team at app.timeros.ai, which does everything except tracking, and your clients at your own portal address. Managers and clients install nothing. A mixed team can share the workspace: a Mac-based designer can be assigned work, approved and invoiced. Their hours will not track themselves. If tracked hours off Windows are the point of the purchase, buy something else; check each vendor’s own platform page, linked in the comparison above.

My client asks where the data is processed. What do I send them?

Databases on MongoDB Atlas in Frankfurt and Ireland, application compute on Render in Frankfurt, uploaded files in Cloudflare R2 created with the EU jurisdiction restriction. Your contract is with Vezoft EOOD, an EU company, under EU law [imprint], and the full sub-processor list is seven names, published, alongside our DPA [our DPA]. You can send links instead of writing an answer. We will not hand you a line saying nothing ever leaves the EU. The Cloudflare CDN edge that serves the pages is global, and Stripe and Google involve US processing. Both are on the same published list. The accurate version is scoped: databases, application compute and uploaded files. And we do not hold SOC 2.

The other tool is cheaper per seat. Why should I pay more?

Sometimes it is cheaper. The price rows in the table above are quoted from each vendor’s own pricing page, in the currency each one publishes, with the date we checked. We have not converted anything. Two things to check first: whether the plan has a seat minimum, which changes what one person actually pays, and which of the things you need are on that entry plan rather than a higher one. Client login, invoicing and support tickets sit in our €8 tier; if you buy those from someone else today, add what they cost before comparing per-seat prices. And if entry price is the binding constraint, buy the cheaper plan. Better that than cancelling in month two.

What do the other tools have that you do not?

Integrations: none are shipped. They appear on the Enterprise tier list and are not built. SOC 2: we do not hold it, in any form. If procurement begins there, that is a real reason to choose something else. Screenshots and keystroke logging: neither feature exists in the product, so if you need visual evidence of work we cannot produce it. Tracking on anything other than the Windows desktop app. Payroll, unlimited departments, a company-wide org chart, single sign-on and an audit log: all Enterprise, which is early access and not self-serve. And a free tier: there is none, and the 14-day trial takes a card. The comparison rows above cite each vendor’s own page, with the date we checked it, for the facts we can verify; for anything they do not cover, read the vendor’s page rather than take our word for it.

Compare the others

  • TimerOS vs Hubstaff

    Where each company says it stores data, what its published sub-processor list contains, how monitoring is configured, and what the entry plan costs.

  • TimerOS vs Time Doctor

    Where each company says it stores data, what its published sub-processor list contains, how monitoring is configured, and what the entry plan costs.

  • Toggl vs Harvest vs Clockify: where each one stops

    The same treatment for the three tools people usually shortlist when monitoring is not what they are shopping for.

Try it against ActivTrak with your own week of work

Fourteen days is enough to track a real week on a Windows machine, raise one invoice from it and let a client into the portal. The card is taken at signup, nothing is charged if you cancel from the Subscription page before day 14, and there is no free tier to fall back on. €8 a month billed annually for one seat, €15 per user for a team.

Card at signup; nothing is charged for 14 days, then billing starts unless you cancel from the Subscription page in your dashboard. Billed annually: €8 a month for one seat, €96 for the year, or €15 per user for a team. Full pricing.

Sources and trademarks
ActivTrak is a trademark of its respective owner. TimerOS is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Birch Grove Software, Inc. dba ActivTrak or ActivTrak. Every claim above was checked on 12 August 2026 against these pages and may have changed since: Trust centre FAQ, Data centre locations, Agent platforms, Sub-processor list, Data processing addendum, Pricing. Prices are quoted in the currency each vendor publishes and are not converted. Spotted something out of date? Tell us and we will correct it.